Nuns reach out for recruits to island haven

Secluded monastery looks to Web for its future

VANESSA H, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

By VANESSA HO, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, November 28, 2002

Sister Mary Grace Boulanger wears a white habit distinguishing her from the other seven nuns during evening Vespers at Our Lady of the Rock Monastery on Shaw Island. Boulanger, who is a novitiate, has not yet taken her final vows.
Photo: Renee C. Byer/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Sister Mary Grace Boulanger wears a white habit distinguishing her...

Mother Martina Roy sits in the guesthouse where she stayed when she first visited Our Lady of the Rock. The house still serves guests from all over the world who visit the monastery.
Photo: Renee C. Byer/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Mother Martina Roy sits in the guesthouse where she stayed when she...

Mother Hildegard George rides with Maeveen, one of two pet dogs at Our Lady of the Rock Monastery.
Photo: Renee C. Byer/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Mother Hildegard George rides with Maeveen, one of two pet dogs at...

Mother Hildegard George is proud of the llamas she has raised and cared for at Our Lady of the Rock Monastery on Shaw Island.
Photo: Renee C. Byer/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

SHAW ISLAND -- Even among Roman Catholic nuns, the small group of aging sisters who live on this secluded island are a little eccentric. They wear the traditional, floor-length habits that went out of style in the 1960s. They follow a fixed routine of eight prayers a day, all in Latin. They generally keep to themselves on an island that keeps to itself, with a population of 150, no tourist services and one little store, which happens to be run by the nuns.

But for about 25 years, the Benedictines and Franciscans have thrived among the kayakers and hikers in the San Juan Islands, among the most secular outposts in the country.

They've clung to their ancient traditions, despite the revolution of Vatican II. And they've weathered the suspicion of small-town islanders by weaving themselves into the rhythms of land and sea: The eight Benedictines tend animals on a large farm fringed with fir trees, while the four Franciscans run the ferry landing and the store.

But like many female religious orders, they are in danger of fading away. Most of the nuns on the island are in their 60s and 70s. One of the Benedictine members died this year at 88. Nationally, the median age of nuns is in the late 60s, and the number of young women interested in joining the Catholic sisterhood is on the decline.

To attract newcomers, the Benedictines on Shaw recently launched a classy Web site trumpeting their pastoral setting: www.rockisland.com/~mhildegard It seems to be working: three strong candidates -- younger women from around the country -- have expressed interest in joining.

If they do, they'll enter a semi-cloistered community etched by prayer and physical labor that often begins at dawn, with chickens to feed, cows to milk, hay to bale. And they'll join women known for their self-sufficiency, work in preserving rare-breed animals and passion for everything from baseball to Peter Jennings.

Following a yearning

On a recent day, a shot rang out in the morning fog, near the 300 acres of forest and farmland owned by the Benedictines of the Primitive Observance. A few hours later, a logger stepped into the nun's guesthouse to tell Mother Martina Roy he was putting a deer in their freezer.

"Oh heavens, yes!" said the petite, elderly nun, eyes widening with glee. Despite her city roots, she's been on the farm long enough to know the right question to ask: "How many points was it?"

Like many nuns, she felt pulled to a religious life as a child schooled by Dominican nuns. But she buried her feelings while she attended college, got married and raised four kids. For more than a decade, she held a job that seemed the polar opposite of Benedictine monasticism: She was Shirley Roy, popular housemother at Alpha Gamma Rho, a fraternity at the University of Arizona.

But her religious yearning nagged at her.

"I kept thinking, 'My children are grown, it's my turn now, and I'm going back to what I always wanted.' It was always submerged," she said.

She recalled her first visit to Our Lady of the Rock, the Benedictines' gated monastery overlooking the water. She had been sitting on a log, when the prioress greeted her in a denim work habit and gray flannel vest.

"She comes up out of the barn, gets in a car with a black lab in it, and says, 'Get in, dear, we'll have a little chat.' "

"I said, 'I can't, the dog is in the front seat.' "

"She said, 'It's all right, get in the back.' "

Roy immediately felt at home.

"I always thought the two go together: God gave us the land. And we pray to God and thank him for the land, and promise to preserve it," she said. "It's a gift."

Life on the island

That was in the mid-'90s. Most of the other nuns have been with the order for much longer, having joined when they were younger. There is Mother Felicitas Curti, who tends the herb garden, has a doctorate in musicology, loves Gregorian chant and is prone to hearty, gap-toothed laughter.

There is Mother Dilecta Planansky, who writes poetry, hand-milks the cows with two barn dogs by her side, roots for the Lakers, and, unlike the other women, happily shares her age of 59.

And there is Mother Hildegard George, who has a doctorate in child and adolescent psychology, runs the island's 4-H club and churns out a battery of opinions, ranging from the ineffectiveness of the United Nations to Peter Jennings being "one of the sexiest men in America."

They're all voracious readers and subscribe to Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. They listen to Canadian radio stations, where the DJ will sometimes say, "This is for the nuns on Shaw Island milking the cows." They host guests from around the world, from Outward Bound kids to college students who work on the farm.

And every Sunday night, they gather around the TV in the library with popcorn and soda to watch a movie. They liked "Legally Blonde," but were mixed on "Fargo."

Mostly, their lives do not stray much from the sixth-century ideals of their founder, St. Benedict, a Roman monk who advocated simplicity, prayer and community. A bell tower summons them to Mass and Vespers every day. Their monastery is off-limits to visitors, although their farm is not. They pray in a chapel behind a grille made of bamboo, symbolizing their separation from the outside world.

"Something is in you and you're born with that. How can people exist without faith?" Curti said. "Even from childhood, I was always searching. We're built to long for something more."

George, who coordinates vocations for the monastery, bristles at the suggestion that her group might be in danger of fading away. She says they're not "desperate" like other orders, and she believes contemplative orders like hers are doing better than ones that have more interaction with the public.

She refuses to give her age or an average age of the group, for fear that young women will think they are a bunch of "wheelchair-bound" women. (Age ranges for this story were attained through record searches.)

But she acknowledges that her order's venture onto the Internet a few months ago was a way to attract candidates.

"People had been telling us we needed to do something for vocations," she said.

They're not alone. In the past few years, many orders have begun to actively recruit new members, through Web sites, magazine ads and campus retreats. Some are beginning to allow newcomers to make renewable, temporary vows, instead of insisting on a final vow of celibacy and obedience.

And some are hopeful that preteens, teenagers and women in their early 20s, with their reported attraction to tradition and religion, will find the monastic, contemplative life appealing.

"It's kind of a last sputter," said Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh, a sociology professor at the University of Houston who has studied the decline of female religious communities. "I think a lot of orders feel like it's now or never, and that if they don't gain members in the next decade, it's all over."

'A hard sell'

Since 1965, the number of religious sisters in the country has dropped by nearly 60 percent to an all-time low of about 74,000 this year, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

Much of the decline happened after the Second Vatican Council in 1962, which allowed women to serve in an unprecedented number of ministries without having to join a convent.

Some religious experts think the future is even more uncertain for isolated or contemplative orders, because young women attracted to vowed communities often opt for ones active in social justice issues.

"It's a hard sell, to explain how a life dedicated to prayer can transform the world, especially in a culture where too many Catholics are not well-catechized about their own faith," said Sister Laura Swan, prioress at St. Placid Priory, a community of Benedictine nuns in Lacey that is a more contemporary counterpart to the nuns at Shaw.

But Swan echoed the words of Mother Theresa, who said the call was to be faithful, not successful. "I think religious life was always meant to be on the prophetic edge," she said.

As a line of cars waited for a ferry stuck in the morning fog, Mother Helen Jean Brinkman took a break from her job at the island's only store. She took her final vows with the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist in 1948, at a time when orders attracted 30 to 40 women a year. Now, they're lucky if one or two come along.

But Brinkman is quick to emphasize the steadfast work she and three fellow nuns do in the name of St. Francis, who advocated service. In the summers, they work at the ferry terminal 16 hours a day, in between buying goods for their store, loading them into a warehouse and stocking shelves. She said they have no intention of slowing down.

"We don't believe in retirement at age 65. Sure, it would be nice to have younger people to come help," she said, in the plain, brown habit and Franciscan cross.

"I don't want to give the impression we're about ready to die. We meet the needs as the needs arise. I think the whole idea is how can we best serve? Well, that we do."